imits; only the aesthetical leads him to
the unlimited. Every other condition in which we can live refers us to a
previous condition, and requires for its solution a following condition;
only the aesthetic is a complete whole in itself, for it unites in itself
all conditions of its source and of its duration. Here alone we feel
ourselves swept out of time, and our humanity expresses itself with
purity and integrity as if it had not yet received any impression or
interruption from the operation of external powers.

That which flatters our senses in immediate sensation opens our weak and
volatile spirit to every impression, but makes us in the same degree less
apt for exertion. That which stretches our thinking power and invites to
abstract conceptions strengthens our mind for every kind of resistance,
but hardens it also in the same proportion, and deprives us of
susceptibility in the same ratio that it helps us to greater mental
activity. For this very reason, one as well as the other brings us at
length to exhaustion, because matter cannot long do without the shaping,
constructive force, and the force cannot do without the constructible
material. But on the other hand, if we have resigned ourselves to the
enjoyment of genuine beauty, we are at such a moment of our passive and
active powers in the same degree master, and we shall turn with ease from
grave to gay, from rest to movement, from submission to resistance, to
abstract thinking and intuition.

This high indifference and freedom of mind, united with power and
elasticity, is the disposition in which a true work of art ought to
dismiss us, and there is no better test of true aesthetic excellence. If
after an enjoyment of this kind we find ourselves specially impelled to a
particular mode of feeling or action, and unfit for other modes, this
serves as an infallible proof that we have not experienced any pure
aesthetic effect, whether this is owing to the object, to our own mode of
feeling--as generally happens--or to both together.

As in reality no purely aesthetical effect can be met with--for man can
never leave his dependence on material forces--the excellence of a work
of art can only consist in its greater approximation to its ideal of
aesthetic purity, and however high we may raise the freedom of this
effect, we shall always leave it with a particular disposition and a
particular bias. Any class of productions or separate work in the world
of art is noble